Ant Farm's Fork Media launches two ad platforms

Fork Media, the maiden venture of former Indiatimes CEO Rishi Khiani's startup platform Ant Farm, has launched two ad platforms including native advertising platform Brand Press and image monetisation solution Impulse.

Fork Media was founded by Samar Verma and Upen Rai in February 2013 and was launched by Ant Farm in April this year. It creates properties with publishers, where brands chip in to sponsor ad zones. The publisher powers the content and also brings in the audience. Fork Media creates, packages and sells it as a package to the advertiser.

Fork Media Founder & CEO Samar Verma says, "Through Brand Press, publishers can allow the instant distribution of branded content directly into their content feed alongside the site's editorial. This is less disruptive than display ads and guarantees higher performance across the desktop, tablet and mobile," said Samar Verma, founder and CEO, Fork Media.

"It follows a hybrid monetisation model to better suit the needs of premium publishers and has developed unconventional metrics to measure the effectiveness of native ad campaigns," added Upen Rai, MD, Fork Media.

With the second platform, Impulse, the company is attempting to monetise images to capture consumer mindshare.

According to Rai, Impluse has an image recognition technology that helps in creating an environment where ads get played out only on images that are screened and approved. "This technology helps us to not only protect brand equity but also stream relevant ads only," he added. Fork Media claims to have brought on board over 100 brands in the last five months.

Ant Farm is a hybrid startup platform that brings together people, helps in ideation or scaling up an existing idea and sees through its execution. It was launched in November last year and has five startups under incubation of which three have gone live (Fork Media, Arrive and Stylista).